Both Switch and PS4 are doing really well and doing so while pursuing completely different development goals. Having a diverse approach to development and HW design only helps the industry appeal to a wider audience. We should all be really happy to see that both are resonating in the market.

I do not understand this incessant need to try and downplay ones performance in comparison to another. They are their own platforms and are far more different than they are alike. Stop focusing on what they are doing in comparison with each other and instead celebrate what they are doing independently.

Benji, would you say that God of War blew up around the time previews started dropping in March and then later after reviews dropped? This goes back to earlier discussion of how much do reviews (and meta scores) matter, at least for single player games.

My guess is that The Last of Us Part II is tracking like that because of implicit trust in Naughty Dog brand.

Spidey by social metrics is enormous. So things like online communities, Twitter, YouTube etc. its killing it.

But in terms of regular broad consumers I haven't seen the same sort of traction GoW had / has. Spidey isn't until September though so that coupled with reviews if they are really positive could push it higher

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Benji, would you say that God of War blew up around the time previews started dropping in March and then later after reviews dropped? This goes back to earlier discussion of how much do reviews (and meta scores) matter, at least for single player games.

My guess is that The Last of Us Part II is tracking like that because of implicit trust in Naughty Dog brand.

GoW always had pretty strong indicators but yeah there is no question that once previews hit it picked up. Reviews took it into another stratosphere though. Game was always going to do well but once reviews hit the thing took on a life of it's own

GOW3 was the last time a Sony First Party did over a million in NPD I believe? Not even TLOU and Uncharted 4 managed that though had tremendous sales and long legs. Think Sony just fast tracked the sequel, still hope Cory gets to make an original IP.

Spidey by social metrics is enormous. So things like online communities, Twitter, YouTube etc. its killing it.

But in terms of regular broad consumers I haven't seen the same sort of traction GoW had / has. Spidey isn't until September though so that coupled with reviews if they are really positive could push it higher

GoW always had pretty strong indicators but yeah there is no question that once previews hit it picked up. Reviews took it into another stratosphere though. Game was always going to do well but once reviews hit the thing took on a life of it's own

GOW3 was the last time a Sony First Party did over a million in NPD I believe? Not even TLOU and Uncharted 4 managed that though had tremendous sales and long legs. Think Sony just fast tracked the sequel, still hope Cory gets to make an original IP.

GOW3 was the last time a Sony First Party did over a million in NPD I believe? Not even TLOU and Uncharted 4 managed that though had tremendous sales and long legs. Think Sony just fast tracked the sequel, still hope Cory gets to make an original IP.

TLOU Part II, looking at various social media metrics, are also very strong. At first glance, there's no 20mil views equivalent of GoW2's gameplay trailer, but combined views, views from non-PS channels, engagement numbers from those stuff are very very strong.

With only one game in the pocket, and without the spin-off test, it's hard to tell for sure, but it feels to me that TLOU is Sony's most fan-beloved IP right now, and the closest thing to what Zelda and Mario enjoys in in terms of extremely engaged fanbase in the Nintendo audience.

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TLOU Part II, looking at various social media metrics, are also very strong. At first glance, there's no 20mil views equivalent of GoW2's gameplay trailer, but combined views, views from non-PS channels, engagement numbers from those stuff are very very strong.

With only one game in the pocket, and without the spin-off test, it's hard to tell for sure, but it feels to me that TLOU is Sony's most fan-beloved IP right now, and the closest thing to what Zelda and Mario enjoys in in terms of extremely engaged fanbase in the Nintendo audience.

I've mentioned it before but in terms of sales the difference beween say an 88 and a 90 Meta doesn't mean all that much.

But if you can get up into that 93 - 94 Meta range? Yeah that legit makes a difference. If TLOU can get into that territory like GoW did, I really wouldn't bet against it blowing up massively. Same could be said of Spidey of course but I need to see more real world consumer interest at the sort of level GoW / TLOU have before I strap myself to that train.

TLOU Part II, looking at various social media metrics, are also very strong. At first glance, there's no 20mil views equivalent of GoW2's gameplay trailer, but combined views, views from non-PS channels, engagement numbers from those stuff are very very strong.

With only one game in the pocket, and without the spin-off test, it's hard to tell for sure, but it feels to me that TLOU is Sony's most fan-beloved IP right now, and the closest thing to what Zelda and Mario enjoys in in terms of extremely engaged fanbase in the Nintendo audience.

I've mentioned it before but in terms of sales the difference beween say an 88 and a 90 Meta doesn't mean all that much.

But if you can get up into that 93 - 94 Meta range? Yeah that legit makes a difference. If TLOU can get into that territory like GoW did, I really wouldn't bet against it blowing up massively. Same could be said of Spidey of course but I need to see more real world consumer interest at the sort of level GoW / TLOU have before I strap myself to that train.

I've mentioned it before but in terms of sales the difference beween say an 88 and a 90 Meta doesn't mean all that much.

But if you can get up into that 93 - 94 Meta range? Yeah that legit makes a difference. If TLOU can get into that territory like GoW did, I really wouldn't bet against it blowing up massively. Same could be said of Spidey of course but I need to see more real world consumer interest at the sort of level GoW / TLOU have before I strap myself to that train.

Yeah, that's what I meant. There's no easy-to-gravitate to "whoa, so huge views on this trailer" ( partly contributed by Sony's late release of the TLOU2 reveal trailer, letting a 3rd-party channel share a similar view count ), but the high number of shares, likes, comments. The fact that those trailers have so many views on channels of different languages ( Spanish, Italian channels, etc ). The consistency of the view counts between the two trailers so far. It's doing really good numbers in its own way.

Look at Ubisoft's service games.Ghost Recon for example only reviewed a 70 Meta and still was a huge seller, with very strong legs.

That's why I stressed the REALLY HIGH score, that 93-94 Meta range genuinely start to make a difference. Once you get into that sort of crazy range it builds buzz by itself. To be clear though GoW was always going to be very big / successful. The review scores just escalated it into a whole other tier

Look at Ubisoft's service games.Ghost Recon for example only reviewed a 70 Meta and still was a huge seller, with very strong legs.

That's why I stressed the REALLY HIGH score, that 93-94 Meta range genuinely start to make a difference. Once you get into that sort of crazy range it builds buzz by itself. To be clear though GoW was always going to be very big / successful. The review scores just escalated it into a whole other tier

Yeah, it depends on the type of game for sure. I definitely don’t think they matter much for multiplayer service games.

But these single player experiences like GoW, yeah, a super high meta and great WoM can do wonders. Certainly seemed to help BotW last year too, as evidenced by comparing it’s to those of Skyward Sword

Look at Ubisoft's service games.Ghost Recon for example only reviewed a 70 Meta and still was a huge seller, with very strong legs.

That's why I stressed the REALLY HIGH score, that 93-94 Meta range genuinely start to make a difference. Once you get into that sort of crazy range it builds buzz by itself. To be clear though GoW was always going to be very big / successful. The review scores just escalated it into a whole other tier

GOW3 was the last time a Sony First Party did over a million in NPD I believe? Not even TLOU and Uncharted 4 managed that though had tremendous sales and long legs. Think Sony just fast tracked the sequel, still hope Cory gets to make an original IP.

I'm so puzzled by this, but I count myself lucky. I have the DS4 that came with my slim and one extra blue one. Both with the Nyko dual slot charging stand. Both have very heavy use, and never had the slightest problem with quality or battery.

Did have some used PS3 controllers with bad battery life though, and those also felt much flimsier. I did get a PS3 like 2013 or something though, so it was probably pretty well used by someone who was hard on it. Fresh battery from Amazon fixed em up though.

Thinking back, in gaming since 1982, the only controllers I've ever had break on me were those awful Atari sticks. NES, SMS, Genesis, SNES, TG16, PS1, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, Xbox, 360, etc. Never a single issue after Atari.

There's a lot of people that have a really fuzzy memory of how Gen7 actually went. This was especially true when MS kept trumpeting that X1 was ahead of 360 in sales rates. Which of course was technically true, but super misleading.

OG Xbox was pretty low in sales, but built a pretty hardcore slice of customers. Thanks to a terrible deal with Nvidia, it ended early despite solid growth from Halo 1 and 2 being iconic juggernauts. However, MS/Xbox wasn't yet mainstream enough to be fully trusted by the average gaming community at large compared to Sony/Nintendo.

Enter 360, which launched pretty early to not very much fanfare. Holidays 2005, no Halo entry, high price for a console, supply shortages, and pretty mediocre sales to be honest. A lot of games were just waiting on PS3 due to big promises from Sony, and the incredible library of PS2 gave a lot of credibility to Sony in terms of delivering yet another massive success to follow PS1 and PS2, not to mention loads of features like HDMI, Blu-ray, and built in WiFi. All three of which were missing from 360.

As we all know, PS3 came in 06 at a ludicrous price of entry (though if you added WiFi and HDDVD to 360, it actually was competitive). It disappointed in terms of being distinctly more powerful than 360, and this was a bad look when Gears of War dropped in November 06, bringing the first landmark new IP to 7th Gen as a MS exclusive. Sales started to ramp up for MS, especially in the US and UK. It grew even more when improved models and Halo 3 followed in 07, with more reliable supply and distribution. This would remain a steady pattern all the way until Kinect, which caused a huge bubble of increased sales of Slim 360s. 360 even reached more than niche levels in mainland Europe and some RoW markets like Canada, Mideast, and Mexico.

So sales for 360 were : slow, moderate, rising, then massive, before slowing down sharply in the post Kinect bubble. Made it easy for X1 to launch and maintain a lead on 360 because of how slowly 360 started.

X1 launched on the coattails of 360, which had built a hardcore base of fans who expected a true sequel to 360 : a powerful, games focused unit with great exclusives and class leading multiplats. Initial sales were indeed massive to that dedicated fanbase. However, it didn't take long at all for that momentum to completely fizzle and turn pretty mediocre. Outside of US/UK, it turned into a pretty rough ride, often being outsold 8 to 1, 10 to 1, or worse, in countries like Germany, France, Spain, etc.

Purely in terms of US sales, X1 is not terribly far off from 360 levels of success up to this point. But in 360 lifetime, it hit Kinect around this time (5 years on), which gave 360 a big 2nd wind. Massive even. X1? Looks like it's pretty flat, up YoY but only compared to an utterly dismal 2017. Rest of world X1 is on life support, excepting UK, which is cooled off a bit on it compared to US (in ratio vs PS4), but remains somewhat solid. Mainland Europe, Asia, Africa, Mideast, and most of South America it almost seems like it's a dead platform.

But : it looks like it will EOL at 45-47 million units, with very healthy attach and digital purchase rates. This is several times higher than WiiU, and it's almost certainly profitable as a platform with no major issues, whereas OG and 360 were pretty bad overall in economic sense. Xbox from 2001-2012 probably lost money overall, perhaps substantial money. X1, despite lower sales than 360 should be massively more profitable than all previous Xbox history, perhaps unless you isolated only 2010-2011.

Definitely sets the stage for an interesting 9th Gen for Xbox. They now have quite a lot of experience in what not to do vs what is successful, and their recent moves (1X, BC, Gamepass, etc) seem to indicate good things. Despite not owning an X1, I'm moderately hopeful they can do better next time with their new outlook and corporate vibe.

Your answer is clearly in the paragraph you quoted, and it's really easy to understand. Yep, animation has definitely gotten better, especially relative to their horrid grass and field colors along with the dated player models. But pitching animations lack big time, and there are all sorts of issues. They definitely need to improve animation, and it should be a major focus going forward. But yeah they have gotten better. I don't think that is hard to understand.

Bearing in mind that the Xbox One is (slowly) approaching 37 million units, and that it is currently up 15% YoY, even though I acknowledge that 2017 was a dismal year for the Xbox One, I find it a little bit difficult with 45-47 million being the EoL number, the latter figure of which would be almost exactly three and half times more units than the Wii U (13.56 million)!

Given that Microsoft goes crazy with bundles and prices, especially in both November and December respectively, I cannot see a scenario where they only sell another 8-10 million in the next two and a half years, between now and 2020.

Personally speaking, I think they will just about scrape by the 50 million milestone; 7 million this year, 4 or 5 million next year and a couple of million towards EoL for the Xbox One.

I know this the NPD thread, but the same applies for the PAL charts, which is the Xbox One second biggest market by a significant margin, and even that’s shrinking all the time...

I would like to think that GamePass is ‘making up’ those low numbers however, there doesn’t seem to be any real indication of just how many people are actually buying - and staying on - these service related products, seeing as Microsoft keeps those numbers to themselves.

Bearing in mind that the Xbox One is (slowly) approaching 37 million units, and that it is currently up 15% YoY, even though I acknowledge that 2017 was a dismal year for the Xbox One, I find it a little bit difficult with 45-47 million being the EoL number, the latter figure of which would be almost exactly three and half times more units than the Wii U (13.56 million)!

Given that Microsoft goes crazy with bundles and prices, especially in both November and December respectively, I cannot see a scenario where they only sell another 8-10 million in the next two and a half years, between now and 2020.

Personally speaking, I think they will just about scrape by the 50 million milestone; 7 million this year, 4 or 5 million next year and a couple of million towards EoL for the Xbox One.

I know this the NPD thread, but the same applies for the PAL charts, which is the Xbox One second biggest market by a significant margin, and even that’s shrinking all the time...

I would like to think that GamePass is ‘making up’ those low numbers however, there doesn’t seem to be any real indication of just how many people are actually buying - and staying on -these service related products, seeing as Microsoft keeps those numbers to themselves.

Bearing in mind that the Xbox One is (slowly) approaching 37 million units, and that it is currently up 15% YoY, even though I acknowledge that 2017 was a dismal year for the Xbox One, I find it a little bit difficult with 45-47 million being the EoL number, the latter figure of which would be almost exactly three and half times more units than the Wii U (13.56 million)!

Given that Microsoft goes crazy with bundles and prices, especially in both November and December respectively, I cannot see a scenario where they only sell another 8-10 million in the next two and a half years, between now and 2020.

Personally speaking, I think they will just about scrape by the 50 million milestone; 7 million this year, 4 or 5 million next year and a couple of million towards EoL for the Xbox One.

I know this the NPD thread, but the same applies for the PAL charts, which is the Xbox One second biggest market by a significant margin, and even that’s shrinking all the time...

I would like to think that GamePass is ‘making up’ those low numbers however, there doesn’t seem to be any real indication of just how many people are actually buying - and staying on - these service related products, seeing as Microsoft keeps those numbers to themselves.